Every game I have ever worked on has had crunch or overruns or both. So here I thought I'd document why. This isn't a philosophical piece or a dig at producers. This is just a list of the reasons that actually caused crunch or overrun. I've had 17 good years out of the games industry and I hope to have many many more. Planning is critical, but it isn't a silver bullet. Here, in no particular order, are the reasons: 1. Breaking down the task ahead is tough. No matter how thoroughly you try, and no matter how much you sit in front of Project thinking, you will ALWAYS mis-estimate the job ahead. Main reason for me personally is that I'm normally asked to project tasks for a deliverable I've not done before, from a codebase I'm not fully knowledgeable about. 2. It's hard to visualise the current state of the project. Even with encyclopaedic knowledge of the code (which is impossible these days) there are hidden corners of technical debt and malfunctions ...
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